SKF sponsors final's arena for Gothia Cup

2014 July 08, 09:00
CEST

Gothenburg, Sweden, 8 July 2014: SKF today announced that the company will extend its cooperation with Gothia Cup and sponsor this year’s final arena fans. Thanks to the close proximity of the spectator stands to the field, it offers the audience a more intimate experience of the games.

“SKF has had a close cooperation with Gothia Cup since 2006 and this year we felt that we wanted to expand the cooperation, in celebration of Gothia Cup’s 40th anniversary. Gothia Cup adapts well to SKF’s values of openness and teamwork, as well as being a responsible corporate citizen in the communities where we live and work. Through the SKF Arena we can offer the audience a fun and exciting event that gives everyone a memory for life,” says Tom Johnstone, SKF President and CEO.

SKF Arena is the natural meeting point for people who want to see good and exciting footboll with both boys and girls from all over the world, in different age groups. The arena will offer preliminary games and playoffs during the entire week and when it’s time for the finals all the teams that have qualified will meet there. At the arena you will be able to follow the Gothia Cup teams from international giants such as Paris Saint-Germain, Newcastle, Red Star (Serbia) and Besiktas (Turkey), as well as popular Swedish teams, e.g. AIK , IFK Göteborg, Malmö FF, BK Häcken and Elfsborg.

"Last year was the first year we had the arena at Heden. It was a fantastic success with about 10 000 spectators at numerous games. Thanks to SKF’s extended cooperation with Gothia Cup we can offer our participants and audience the arena also this year,” says Dennis Andersson, General Secretary, Gothia Cup.

The games will be commented by Jesper Sjöberg and Claes Andersson in Studio SKF. They will also entertain the audience in between the games, with Swedish sport profiles as guests and competitions that engage the audience. Jesper Sjöberg is a known Swedish commentator and musical comedy artist, with a great interest in football and Claes Andersson is a commentator from Viasat. The two commentators lead Studio SKF for the fourth year in a row.

Gothia Cup, the largest youth football tournament in the world provides an opportunity for young people to play on the world stage and compete against teams from across the globe. This year, over 1600 teams with more than 37,000 kids and teenagers will play over 4500 games on 110 playing fields. The final games are played before an audience of over 12,000 spectators – an audience many adult football teams only dream about.

SKF is a leading global supplier of bearings, seals, mechatronics, lubrication systems, and services which include technical support, maintenance and reliability services, engineering consulting and training. SKF is represented in more than 130 countries and has around 15,000 distributor locations worldwide. Annual sales in 2013 were SEK 63,597 million and the number of employees was 48,401. www.skf.com